Preach Jacobs column: Don't wear blackface on Halloween. Duh | Fight the power

It's the end of October, so it's that time again – no, it's not hoodie season. I'm not even talking about election season. It's peak season for people choosing a racist Halloween costume. As a black man looking to educate my less melancholic brothers and sisters, I offer this this week as a useful PSA for dealing with Halloween. I thought we had moved beyond those warnings, but you know, the expectation that something racist would happen on October 31st is a perennial theme.

For the record, we don’t need to remind many people of this. “Chappelle Show” ally and co-creator Neal Brennan noted on his X account, “Somewhere a white guy is planning a costume tonight that will ruin his entire future.”

Neal has the confidence we can handle. Not all Halloween celebrations are created equal, but things like this usually only happen lately when there's an election involved (I can't imagine Kamala Harris being upset by racist costumes) or when a pop culture-related event is happening .

An image circulated on social media of a white young man in blackface and a white woman in a pink shirt holding a sign that read “Johnson's Baby.” The joke was about Diddy and the reports of baby oil being found in his house.

I'm not sure they thought it was okay because Sean Combs' stock is lower than Boeing's right now, but don't get it twisted. You're messing around and maybe you don't need shoe polish to get a black eye. Someone would donate one to you.

This reminds me of a time years ago when I worked in a photo lab. This was at the height of The Chappelle Show, and one of its famous characters, Tyrone Biggums, the crack addict in the red hat, was becoming part of the American lexicon.

When I was printing photos that belonged to one of my colleagues after a Halloween party, one of the images surprised me. It was a picture of a white guy in blackface, a red hat and a piece of chicken. That's what I mean. When people act like it's just a joke we all know, it goes a step further and crosses a racial line. The blackface was offensive enough, but the chicken was an added racist condiment to try at a place like Maurice's BBQ (that will be an article for another day).